We often hear that if you make a claim often enough and loud enough there will come a point when that claim becomes truth. James Taylor has mastered this technique and seeks to solidify his "truth" for an audience of mostly willing participants. In the next post in our series (which actually occurs before the video in the first post) we examine another claim made by Mr. Taylor about the Kilimanjaro reference in the film by Al Gore. By the by, as an educator I would say that Mr. Taylor is an absolutely horrendous teacher due to that fact that he flies through his information at such a speed (especially given the nature of that information) that I daresay not a single person in that room retained the details. Perhaps, though, that is the genius of Mr. Taylor for all you need to know as a global warming denier is that this man cited some article that said something that just might question anthroprogenic global warming.

Once again, I present to you Mr. Taylor:

At the beginning, Mr. Taylor once again makes the claim that the Earth has warmed 0.6 degrees since the end of the Little Ice Age. However, if you visit the Goddard Institute for Space Studies you will find that the Earth has actually warmed 0.8 degrees in the past century with 0.6 degrees of that warming coming in the past three decades. Given that this information is around 2 years old, you have to wonder why a man so interested in the science would have ignored this data.

Global warming is now 0.6°C in the past three decades and 0.8°C in the past century. It is no longer correct to say that "most global warming occurred before 1940". More specifically, there was slow global warming, with large fluctuations, over the century up to 1975 and subsequent rapid warming of almost 0.2°C per decade.

Taylor goes on to reference an article he found in Nature Magazine about the glacier found on Mount Kilimanjaro. Given that Mr. Taylor uses Nature Magazine and must hold its findings in high regard I decided to do a little experiment. If you go to their website and do a search for "Global Warming" it yields 1,744 results. I would challenge anyone to go to through those results (subscription required) and find a majority of articles that challenge anthroprogenic global warming. If Mr. Taylor and others claim that the majority of science refutes global warming it shouldn't very difficult to make such a collection of articles.

The article he does use, "African Ice Under Wraps" by Betsy Mason does indeed discuss the idea that deforestation is the cause for the shrinking Kilimanjaro ice cap. However, it is unclear whether this entirely discounts global warming as Mr. Taylor tries to assert or, more likely, that this is not the most pertinent example that could be found.

After hearing this, the friend I attended the Denial Forum with made a good point. If farmers cutting down trees can have an affect on the climate of a mountain, then why is it so difficult to believe that humans all over the planet can have an affect on the climate of the globe?

The folks over at Real Climate do an excellent job of fisking this claim as well:

The Heartland Institute's propagation of the notion that the Kilimanjaro glacier retreat has been proved to be due to deforestation is even more egregious. They quote "an article published in Nature" by Betsy Mason ("African ice under wraps," Nature, 24 November, 2003) which contains the statement "Although it's tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain's foothills is the more likely culprit." Elsewhere, Heartland refers to this as a "study." The "study" is in reality no scientific study at all, but a news piece devoted almost entirely to Euan Nesbit's proposal to save the Kilimanjaro glacier by wrapping it in a giant tarp. The article never says who the "experts" are, nor does it quote any scientific studies supporting the claim. The Mason news article is what Crichton quotes as "peer reviewed research" proving that it is deforestation, not global warming, which is causing the Kilimanjaro glaciers to retreat. (George Monbiot's article in The Guardian documents a similar case of systematic misrepresentation of glacier data by skeptics.)

Comments

Another Liberal Lemming in the school system indoctrinating the kids in our schools. When one has nothing to believe in they create their own religion such as Save the Planet and Global Warming.

The earth cools and warms and their isn't a damn thing we can do to change what the planet has done for millions of years.

The arrogance; to think we humans have any control over the climate.

Anonymous
On
April 20, 2008 at 2:48 PM

The ignorance; to think that we humans have no impact on our climate. The arrogance is from DC who believes that only people who are atheist believe in global warming. I guess this godless group also includes his president, Pat Robertson, and about 70% of the American people.

I favor trying to make our country energy independent so we won’t have to kill and be killed defending kings and dictators half way around the world just so we can continue our dependence on fossil fuels. If DC wants to wait for God or Jesus to save us the least he can do is try to make their job easier. DC is not even willing to do that. He may be a man of faith but he has no respect for the creation of his deity.

I’m glad to see that he thinks the earth is millions of years old, unlike Rep. Olson, Sen. Jungbauer and others who gave this seminar who believe the earth is just a few thousand years old.

I pity DC and others like him/her. It must be hard to live your life denying what you see and relying on the words and wisdom that was written by men who knew the world was flat and kings were divine.

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